Rome.

The Open Court, Jun 2010

By F. W. Fitzpatrick, Published on 06/13/10

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Rome.

BY F. W. FITZPATRICK. WITH a new king over "United Italy," too young a man to remember the stirring events preceding 1870, and with a new Pope in St. Peter's chair, as in the natural course of events there must soon be, to whom that period can be but a rather vague memory, there may be entertained a hope that a better understanding and friendlier relations may obtain hereafter 'twixt Vatican and Quirinal than there have been, while the occupants of both palaces were men who had passed through those troublous times, who had played important parts in them, and who had come out of them thoroughly prejudiced and embittered against each other. Aye, there are some people even sanguine enough to hope that this new Pope, through the grace of God, superior diplomacy, or a power lent him by other nations, may wrest to the See of Rome the temporal power over its old Dominions, that its Bishop may again be King in deed as well as in name. These latter good people are, I am afraid, overly sanguine. True, the Papacy has been dispossessed of its temporal power, and had it again restored many a time, twice even in the past century; but this last dispossession, methinks, is final. One is as justified in expecting to hear Rome ring again with the shouts of "Ave Caesar" as he is in expecting to ever hear that "Eternal City" again acclaim a pope as its ruler. I will go a step farther and say that though we may hope that, under these changed conditions, new and younger regimes, friendlier relations /nay obtain between these great contending parties, the hope is based upon no very rock-like foundation. In fact, we may feel reasonably sure that neither this nor the next generation will witness such a change, desirable as it may seem, for the simple reason that neither party can possibly recede from the position - created by its predecessors, a position that neither, indeed, would be justified in receding from, or in changing in any way, and that neither party, its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, really desires to change, strange as that may seem. Possibly this is treading upon thin ice. Prejudice is such that some people dislike even to hear the name of the Pope mentioned, while there are others who deem it blasphemous to speak that august name except in profoundest reverence. Then, too, the subject may be considered abstract, and we all know how intolerant are our twentieth-century readers of anything of that sort. Still, there are at least thirty millions of thinking Catholics more or less interested in this subject, and surely as many more of other sects who may take a passing interest in it, as well as many unprejudiced students of events and conditions, so that, after all, this brief, dispassionate review of the conditions as they are may not go absolutely unread. Some may think it was the high-handedness of Pius IX., the last of the Sovereign Pontiffs, that brought about this last and final overthrow of the "temporal power"; others say it was the Italian Revolution of i860, and still others lay the blame at the door of Garibaldi and of his, one time, not over-zealous superior, Victor Emmanuel, while many claim this undoing of the Pope was the work of the great Cavour. Beyond all these, and still beyond, is the real cause. Modern Thought is the real culprit. As LeroyBeaulieu aptly puts it "... a papal monarchy, the very embodiment of the conservativism of the Middle Ages, is absolutely an impossibility in this nineteenth century that has seen the secularisation of every state accomplished. ..." For three hundred years has the tendency been that way, the work going on, and the climax was but the logical sequel of that process of evolution. The fact that Rome was in Italy amounted to little. Had the papal kingdom been in any other land or "an island in the sea," the result would have been the same. That structure was sure to crumble, of its own weight and spite of the stays, the props, the flying buttresses that other nations might have applied—for a time. Undoubtedly the political necessities of Italy on the one hand and the undiplomatic moves of Pius IX., while basking under the scant protection of "Napoleon the Little," on the other, hastened the end. The world witnessed then a strange paradox indeed : a people in revolt against its many rulers, seeking not to establish a republic, but still clamoring to become subjects of a king whose rule was to be over " United Italy." State after state petitioned to be allowed to fly the flag of the Sardinian King, Victor Emmanuel II. Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and even the papal Romagna so changed their fealty. The Pope, conscious of the trend of affairs, interposed all of his mighty power in the way of the Republican-Monarchical wave that was sweeping over Italy. He hurled allocutions, excommunications, and irregular troops, some claim even brigandage, in the way, and he comprehended in his wrath not only those he supposed his enemies, immediately surrounding his ter (...truncated)


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F. W. Fitzpatrick. Rome., The Open Court, 2010, Volume 1901, Issue 7,